When a dozen lawyers rose together to be sworn into the Supreme Court bar Tuesday morning, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made a sweeping motion with his hands.

It translated in American Sign Language to: “Your motion is granted.”

Roberts learned to sign the phrase just for that occasion, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.

That moving gesture alone made the admittance of 12 deaf lawyers to the highest court in the land historic. All were members of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Bar Association and were from various parts of the country.

A Georgetown University Reflective Engagement in the Public Interest Project

Saturday, June 6, 2015 from 9 AM to 5 PM

Location: Lohrfink Auditorium in the Rafik B. Hariri Building on the campus of Georgetown University

This reflective engagement event aims to build on the partnership and collaboration among individuals and groups seeking efficient ways to ensure that the heritage of our sign language is passed on to future generations.The target audience includes Deaf Community members, CODA groups, ASL teachers, Deaf Studies scholars, Deaf Library advocates and library professionals.

Interpreter services, brownbag lunch and light refreshments will be provided. There is no registration or admission charge.

The Grand Mosque Academy in the Makkah region (Mecca region), in the western part of Saudi Arabia, is teaching its staff sign language to assist the thousands of hearing-impaired pilgrims coming to the Grand Mosque to worship.

The announcement was made Sunday by Waleed Basamad, the head of the academy at the Grand Mosque. He said that those people with disabilities are equal to anyone who enter the Grand Mosque to worship and it is their duty to give them assistance by communicating with them in their own special language. According to the academy director, they have already trained 30 academy staff for said purpose.

Sign language workshop

The sign language course is part of their training program, called Effective Communication Skills. Program instructor is Mohammad Al-Abumadrah. Academy director Basamad said they conduct several workshops and training regularly but the sign language program, which is a part of their 9th training program, is particularly important.

Summer Camp Opportunity

Believe it or not, summer is just around the corner and we’re looking for campers for our 7th annual Sign Language Camp. The camp is a one week residential program for children who have completed grades 3-8. We are looking for both Deaf children and hearing children who are interested in learning sign.

Some students at Mesa Community College say when it comes to communicating with deaf individuals, they aren’t exactly sure how to do that. Although grabbing a pen and paper would be most people’s gut reaction, there is a little more to it than just relying on the written word: a habit that hearing individuals are so accustomed to. Most people are not aware that the deaf culture exists as a culture.

For most students, the definition of a culture includes language, customs, beliefs and traditions being passed from one generation to the next although language seems to be the top criterion mentioned. Mesa offers American Sign Language (and Alice Marino) said the biggest misconception students have going into her class is that ASL is an easy course. Unfortunately, she said, sometimes those students are the ones that struggle the most.

Marino said she was guilty of having this same misconception but quickly adjusted and learned there was more to ASL and hopes that students can come away from her course with the general awareness of language and culture. Just as learning any foreign language requires work, so does sign language.

Michelle Barto, an ASL instructor at MCC who is deaf, agrees that generally there are students taking sign language over German or Japanese because they believe it will be easier. “Students believe it’s an easy class because they think it’s English underhand but it’s not,” she said. “People are either visual or auditory learners.”

Fan-made videos from around the world have brought Pharrell Williams to tears. Well, there’s been another endearing rendition of “Happy,” this one courtesy of the kids at Camp Mark Seven’s Deaf Film Camp, which offers filmmaking instruction to deaf and hard-of-hearing youths.

Yes, all the lyrics to the former No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 track translated into sign language. Pharrell must be very, very proud.

Located in upstate New York, Camp Mark Seven has brought in the likes of Rosa Lee Timmand and Azora Telford to teach deaf filmmaking. Check out the school’s profile in The Hollywood Reporter here.

This video is an ASL interpretation of Pharrell Williams’s “Happy.” An expression of music in ASL composed by Rosa Lee Timm and Azora Telford. The video was produced by a team of Deaf campers & staff from Deaf Film Camp 2014 at Camp Mark Seven.

Sign language is finding popularity among hearing students as a new way of communicating with each other and with their deaf friends. In some schools where it is offered as a foreign language, the demand is so heavy that they often have to turn down prospective students. According to a Modern Language Association Survey, American Sign Language ranks as the fourth most popular language almost displacing German from third place. In the past 10 years, students taking ASL has risen by more than 50 percent.

The popularity and increasing interest in sign language can be gauged from the fact that Silent Games, involving 200 colleges was held at Federal Way High School. It also involved school students and their parents, some hearing, some deaf. The participants who could not speak all evening except using sign language participated in many games and competitions.

In one school, for one day each semester, a teacher gives all her students including those who can hear a pair of earplugs to wear all day.

“The deaf have been learning the language of the hearing for the past 150 years,” says a teacher. “Now it’s time for the hearing to learn the language of the deaf.”

Ninety-one thousand students opted for an ASL class at 730 U.S. institutions during the Fall of 2009, according to the language association. This figure is expected to rise dramatically in the next survey in early 2014.

Some of the reasons for this popularity are mentioned here

Students see a practical use for ASL and as an education for getting jobs of interpreting, teaching and counseling

Students have a difficult time sitting through entire classes all day without much movement. Sign language gives them an active and visual relief. Students are seen signing to one another outside the classroom and, in it, making sign conversations about weekends and boyfriends.

Distributed 2013 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons (NVRC), 3951 Pender Drive, Suite 130, Fairfax, VA 22030; www.nvrc.org; 703-352-9055 V, 703-352-9056 TTY, 703-352-9058 Fax. Items in this newsletter are provided for information purposes only; NVRC does not endorse products or services. You do not need permission to share this information, but please be sure to credit NVRC. This news service is free of charge, but donations are greatly appreciated.

Carver Center is seeking a volunteer to teach daytime sign language to seniors. The schedule is flexible: Tuesdays from 11 am to 12 noon, Wednesdays from 1 to 2 pm are available, and other days and time slots may be available. The Carver Center’s ideal schedule would be to have weekly classes to help with retention of the sign language skills. The length of the class would be up to the volunteer, but the Center would like to have at least a 12-week commitment.

Distributed 2013 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons (NVRC), 3951 Pender Drive, Suite 130, Fairfax, VA 22030; www.nvrc.org; 703-352-9055 V, 703-352-9056 TTY, 703-352-9058 Fax. Items in this newsletter are provided for information purposes only; NVRC does not endorse products or services. You do not need permission to share this information, but please be sure to credit NVRC. This news service is free of charge, but donations are greatly appreciated.

Please join us for a tour of the East Building collection at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday, December 9th at 1pm. The tour is offered in American Sign Language (ASL) with voice interpretation into English, departing from the lobby/visitor’s desk of the East Building’s Main Floor.

In addition to these regularly occurring tours, sign language interpreters and guides for visitors who are blind or have low vision are available by appointment for tours of the permanent collection as well as for special exhibitions. Please call (202) 842-6247 or the Gallery’s Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176 three weeks in advance for an appointment. Special headphones, which deliver full-frequency digital audio sound in a lightweight design, are available. Printed scripts of all recorded tours are available for visitors who are deaf or hard of hearing, and free large-print brochures are available at the entrances to some of the special exhibitions. For more information, please visithttp://www.nga.gov/ginfo/access.shtm.

On Thursday, December 6 from 10 am to 11 am, Fair Oaks will be hosting a unique event at its spectacular holiday Ice Palace.

Deaf and hard of hearing children from local schools and their teachers will visit with our first-ever American Sign Language ‘Signing Santa’ and his Signing Elf.’ Beginning with a special reception catered by the Corner Bakery, balloon artists and a signed performance by the deaf dance troop Hulala, the event will culminate with a tour of the Ice Palace and a visit with our ‘Signing Santa.’ Each child will also receive special keepsake photos with Santa, a gift bag including surprises from Cox Communications, and a voucher for a first-ever signed Blu-ray video, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment’s “Ice Age 4: Continental Drift” releasing December 11. Read more . . . →

President Obama took a deaf student by surprise last week by speaking to him in sign language.

Stephon Williams, a 26 year-old student from Prince George’s Community College, was standing in line after an event on energy policy in Maryland when he managed to catch the president’s attention, D.C.-based blog Distriction reports. Obama, who had been busy shaking hands, looked directly at the student.

Cued Speech is a mode of communication based on the phonemes and properties of traditionally spoken languages. Cueing allows users who are deaf or hard of hearing or who have language/communication disorders to access the basic, fundamental properties of spoken languages through the use of vision.(taken from the National Cued Speech Association’s website)

Below is a list of local Cued Speech Transliterators who provide services in the metro DC area:

NVRC eNews provides news & community announcements on variety of topics related to deaf and hard of hearing people and their families, friends, co-workers, employers, business and government agencies that serve deaf and hard of hearing people. (Includes announcements for Open Caption Movies and Metro Washington, DC community events) eNews-Archives